If you need a holiday festive cocktail, you want to include cranberry for sure. This cocktail can be consumed as a shot, or as a martini. If you have some pretty shot glasses, it would make a nice welcome shot for a party. Easy and pretty - great for New Years Eve!

INGREDIENTS

Ice

1½ oz. fresh lime juice

1½ oz. cranberry vodka (we had plain)

1 oz. triple sec (we used Cointreau)

1 oz. cranberry juice (used 1 1/2 oz since we had regular vodka)

Fill a cocktail shaker halfway with ice. Add the ingredients and shake well. Pour into either shot glasses or a martini glass and garnish with a wedge of lime

This was SO tart! Now, limes can be very varied in tartness, so you might start with 3/4-1 oz of lime juice and then adjust it. We just added some simple syrup - about 1 oz - and it was really good!

RP Servings: 4 shots or 1 martini

RATING: 2 stars as written, 3 1/2 stars with the simple syrupThis is pretty and very tasty! It would be easy to make a bunch of them, perfect for holiday entertaining.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!! This recipe is an interesting mix, one I haven't seen before: bourbon, strawberry, bitters, and ginger. I'm not sure how it will turn out, but my son, the cocktail master, is going to give it a try.

Muddle the strawberry, lemon juice, and simple syrup in a cocktail shaker. Add the bourbon, bitters and ice. Shake and strain into a tall glass filled with ice. Top with a floater of ginger beer (pour a little carefully on top), and garnish with the strawberry.

RP Servings: 1

RATING: 2 starsPart of the problem with this is the SUPER hot/sharp ginger beer. I do NOT recommend this brand - even by itself, it burns all the way down. But once you get past the floater, you can actually taste the drink. One of us gave it a 3, the rest a 2. It's just... odd. You could try a milder ginger beer or use ginger ale, or leave that off altogether. But for us, this isn't a keeper.

We've made a similar version of this Garlic Roasted Broccoli dish before, but the previous dish included lemon juice, and this has a different prep technique, which actually makes all the difference in the world.

Pour mixture in the bag with broccoli, and shake until completely mixed. Dump broccoli onto a greased baking sheet.

I knew at this point that all was not well. You may not be able to tell from the picture, but the garlic/salt/oil clumped onto certain pieces of the broccoli. I did my best to pick those pieces out and disperse it, but there were still definitely pieces with lots of garlic and salt stuck in the tops.

Bake for 20 minutes.

Remove from oven and sprinkle parmesan cheese on top.

As a side note, this was only 1/4 cup of cheese, not the full 1/2 cup. And even 1/4 cup was too much.

RP Servings: 3-4Stars: As written- 1. The parmesan cheese alone was overwhelming, and like I said, we used HALF of what they told us to. And as I suspected, some pieces were fine, and some were pure garlic bombs because the garlic wouldn't disperse. With much less cheese, the non-garlic-bomb pieces were pretty decent- maybe 2.5 or 3.

I'm just gonna say it - I make REALLY good salsa. It's really more pico de gallo, not like the cooked-tomato salsa you get at a Mexican restaurant. In the summer, mine is especially killer, but in the off-season I thought it would be nice to have a recipe that didn't depend so much on the flavor of just a few fresh ingredients. This recipe seems like it will be flavorful and still fresh tasting, so I'm going to break out the chips and give it a try.

Put everything in a food processor and whir on high until finely chopped.

When I tasted this, it was bland. I added:juice of 1 more lime2 tbsp red wine vinegarmore saltthe other half of the onionmore cilantro

RP Servings: 6-8

RATING: As written, 2 1/2. As doctored, 3 1/2

Overall, with the adjustments, this is pretty good. But both my husband and I detected and didn't love the flavor of the chilies in the canned tomato. It's kind of a... weird... flavor. I would say to use regular canned tomatoes (they don't have to be diced since you're chopping them up) and throw in another fresh jalapeno. I think you could get it to a 4 with that. The great thing about salsas, though, is they can be tweaked for every individual preference, so play around with it. I think it's a good base recipe in general.

I don't eat breakfast. I know, I know- it's the most important meal of the day, I get it. Even so, I usually don't eat it. If I start eating first thing in the morning, I am hungry ALL DAY. So I save myself the sadness of being constantly hungry by just not eating it. And so, that is why this spinach and ham frittata is a lunch frittata.

Ingredients:

8 eggs

one potato, diced

¼ cup chopped onion

½ cup diced ham

handful of baby spinach

¼ cup water or ¼ cup almond milk (I used half and half because I had some leftover in my fridge that I wanted to get rid of)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Whisk eggs and water or cream in bowl, season with salt and pepper.

Add all of the other ingredients and mix.

Pour into deep pie dish.

Bake for ~20 minutes and serve warm.

RP Servings: 6Stars: 2. We've had a lot of disappointing recipes lately, and I was really hoping this wouldn't be one of them. Unfortunately, it had no flavor. (It also took over 30 minutes to cook, not the 20 promised, but that's beside the point.) Most frittata recipes have you sauteeing the ingredients in various seasonings first to get more flavor, and it's clear why that is. Also, it needed some cheese. And probably butter, and definitely more seasonings. The ingredients themselves and really tasty, so each bite makes you sad when it tastes like nothing. I can't imagine how bad it would have been if I used water instead of the half and half I had. I want to make a frittata again, but I won't be using this recipe.

Author

Jennings & Ryan are mother/daughter, and love to cook. And look at Pinterest. So we thought...Why not? At least one Pinterest recipe, with photos and a review, every day for a year. What could go wrong?